barb@oliven.UUCP (Barbara Jernigan) (03/07/86)
References:
A few months ago we were discussing the virtues and vices of computers
as writing tools. Today a collection of articles crossed my desk, and
I thought I'd share the following with you (note, this is *not* a sales
pitch)(also keep in mind this was translated from Italian):
It reads, it studies, it takes care, and it teaches:
It's a PC
Professor Umberto Eco, author of "The Name of the Rose" has been using
computers for two years.
He says: "I started with a stand alone Olivetti ETS, but now
I also use an M21 and an M24 and I use wordprocessor software on them.
I did a little research to see which ones handle the text better. I
tried Display Write 2, old Word Star and Word Star 2000, Easywriter
and Free Work. I arrived at the conclusion that for my university and
my journalistic work Word Star 2000 works most comfortably, even though
it always has the defect of filling the disks up too quickly. I use
ETS and Word Star 2000 at the same time on the personal since ETS is
not IBM compatible. It would be great if ETS would attempt IBM
compatibility.
For which tasks do you use a word processor?
I use it for long essays, but also for brief journalistic
articles like my column for "Espresso".
Besides in terms of practicality, has the computer influenced your work
in other ways?
In many ways: It is easier to condense what I write by
summarizing, I can write down what comes into my mind and then go back
and clean up the text deleting words, moving things around. This is
very useful for short texts.... The word processor lets you write things
down almost as fast as you think them, without worrying about errors,
you can write down your most creative ideas and then connect them or
move them around later. However, sometimes I feel the need to go slower
and to use pen and pencil or a typewriter, something that makes me go
slower. Instead, when I want to go faster, the computer is the best
means to accomplish this goal.
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Barb
"We need men, brains, engineers that know how to combine
knowledge, fantasy and risk. They are the new raw materials
of the future."
-- Carlo de Benedetti